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two faces of fourteen

How long will a journey take you? When will you know you have arrived?

The answer lies somewhere between your first bus abandoning you at the Hyatt in Pune:

And the second breaking down along the side of the road:

India will always remain a study of contrasts. Kohlapur awaits.

Sunday snaps

barber shop

Noorie

coloring poppets @  Tara Tots

kingdom of dreams

to market

to market

invisibility/performativity

Take a "City Walk" tour of the Delhi railway station and backstreets bustling with daily activity. Get a look at Indian city life as few outsiders do, led by your English-speaking guide, a former street child who lived in the train station. Visit Salaam Balaak trust, a non-profit organization working to save runaway and abandoned children from the hardships of life on the street.

How do we present ourselves to the world? As I try to digest the sights and sounds of this first full day, over and over, this question reverberates within ~ how do we play the edge between appearing, and disappearing? 

We are met outside of the train station by our guide, Iqbal. At the age of five, his father simply walked away from him in his village market, never to return, and the "aunt" and "uncle" who claimed him put him to work, then physically abused him when his work was not enough. What compels a five year-old to believe his life would be better were he to board a train, bound for anywhere, rather than to stay put? There is nothing in my life, as a mother or a daughter, that could have prepared me for this. 

Invisibility was Iqbal's armor, his protection from government authority, from other children and pimps, all preying off of the other for the sake of their own survival. But, as a child who was saved, he now skillfully walks us down narrow streets, then up three flights of stairs until we are at doors of one of Salaam Balaak's five shelters. It is in these rooms that a different picture emerges. I am confronted with  boys all vying, through their actions or their voices, to be photographed, to be physically in the picture. We shake hands, we exchange names. Whether purely a performance for attention in the moment, whether my presence conditions and contributes to their frenetic actions, I bear witness to children that demand to be seen. 

Fifteen minutes later, it is all over. In silence, we descend the staircase, squeezing disinfectant into our hands, wiping away the human touch, or possibly sanitizing the experience itself? 

As a visitor to India, I try not to draw unnecessary attention to myself. Respectfully, I pin back my hair; I dress in traditional clothing, modestly covered from my shoulders to my ankles. And yet, as a tall, Caucasian, blond woman, how can I be anything other than other? Within this paradox, I take comfort that if I can only be seen as exactly who I am, then let me embrace the possibility of being my whole self. Let my voice be not a performance, let the identity that I construct be one that is authentic and meaningful. Welcome to India. 

* I fully recognize that my reflections, and the luxury to have the time for such contemplations, are a gift of my life circumstances. It is my hope that this recognition will not act as a shield, but rather allow me to see with greater clarity.

dropping back, letting go

And then there is the art of letting go. Being moved to surrender is an act of grace.

Tamar Adler
An Everlasting Meal

If you had told me eleven years ago, when I first stepped onto my mat that I would someday find myself in the seat of the teacher, or preparing for a third trip to India, I would have said you were crazy. For me, asana began as an escape. A physical escape from waking at 5:30 in the morning only to climb aboard a treadmill; an emotional escape from watching the relentless, electronic images of the twin towers falling again, and again. However, as my practice began to unfold, I began to receive something more: permission first to turn inside, and then to trust in being and becoming myself. 

And so today I begin a journey to a place as utterly familiar to me, as it is unknown. Traveling with six other women, I am en route to New Delhi, Mumbai, and to rural communities surrounding Kohlapur. I will be guided through the back streets of Delhi and into the brick kilns where children are still forced into bonded labor. Wherever it takes me, I am dropping back, I am letting go. 

India is calling...

becoming real

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.

But the skin horse only smiled.

Margery Williams

The Velveteen Rabbit